Rameau's Nephew

History

In Rameau's Nephew, Diderot attacked and ridiculed the critics of the Enlightenment, but he knew from past experience that some of his enemies were sufficiently powerful to have him arrested or the work banned. Diderot had been imprisoned in 1749 after publishing his Lettre sur les aveugles (Letter about the Blind) and his Encyclopédie had been banned in 1759. Prudence, therefore, may have dictated that he showed it only to a select few.

After the death of Diderot, a copy of the manuscript was sent to Russia, along with Diderot's other works.[10] In 1765, Diderot had faced financial difficulties, and the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia had come to his help by buying out his library. The arrangement was quite a profitable one for both parties, Diderot becoming the paid librarian of his own book collection, with the task of adding to it as he saw fit, while the Russians enjoyed the prospect of one day being in possession of one of the most selectively stocked European libraries, not to mention Diderot's papers.[11][12]

An appreciative Russian reader communicated the work to Schiller, who shared it with Goethe who translated it into German in 1805.[1] The first published French version was actually a translation back into French from Goethe's German version. This motivated Diderot's daughter to publish a doctored version of the manuscript. In 1890, the librarian Georges Monval found a copy of Rameau's Nephew by Diderot's own hand while browsing the bouquinistes along the Seine. This complete version is now in a vault in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City.[13]

Hegel quotes Rameau's Nephew in §522 and §545 of his Phenomenology of Spirit.


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